But that had been before the interminable waste of the Grass War and the long train of young women and men in front of my desk with the trinkets they thought would give them a chance of not becoming food for crows in a field somewhere.

John Halpern knew it should be a heavy weight on his conscience, to wake up and know that he was going to kill a thing that used to be a man. Whether it was or wasn't was a topic of much internal contemplation for him as he walked up the long path to his brother-in-law's house to ask for help. The fact that his brother-in-law was himself a devil-man did not escape him.

Erin Cashier is a registered nurse in the Bay Area. She's been published by Shimmer, Abyss & Apex, Writers of the Future, Escape Pod, Podcastle, Neil Clarke's Upgraded anthology, and numerous times in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including "The Alchemist's Feather" in BCS #25 and the Best of BCS, Year One anthology.